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somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

  Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.  Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching undertow

about Carl


Carl is the main character in "Divorce in the Afternoon." He is not me, not by a long shot. He is a messy, overlapped Xerox of three men I know. I just fill in the gaps with my own odd experiences when I get lost in the story, like the time I was on a long flight sitting next to a nun. I am Carl the way all of us are Carl, or have been caught in some broken, confused, embarrassing stretch of time. Writing about a common act is a real challenge, because everyone already knows so much (or at least think they do). Who has not been touched by divorce, or witnessed one up close? They are as common as root canals.

I found my way back to this story yesterday, somehow at the little white desk, in the folding white chair as children played downstairs, as a cup of tea grew cold next to my hand. The fountain pen scratches on the empty page. I am just listening. The ink is bright and blue. The story, dark and sad. How can a man be so naive, so far into his life? Is he really such a fool, or does he know deep down what might happen at any time, what phone can ring, what voice at the other side with measured words and then the click of the receiver?

That is what I ask myself, sitting at this little desk in Moscow.

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